Teaching Students to "Face the Past" in Post-apartheid South Africa

Phillipa Murray is head of the history department at Westerford School, a grade 8-12 co-ed state school in Cape Town, South Africa. Murray was the same age as her pupils when South Africa began to dismantle apartheid and created a new democracy. She was in 8th grade when the first black pupils attended her school, which had been exclusively for white pupils. In those days, Murray recalls, pupils asked questions politely, but when they were told to stop asking questions they did.

For Murray, apartheid's legacies are still unfolding, and she thinks it is crucial for her pupils to have an understanding of the nation's past and to ask questions about what that means for them today.

"I want my pupils not to be bitter and resentful about South Africa's history. I think they're very lucky that they are living in a country where history is so current and so raw."

The means to engage Murray's pupils in thinking about history is a new course at Westerford called "Facing the Past." Last December, Murray attended the Facing the Past workshop facilitated by Karen Murphy, Facing History's director of International Programs and Dylan Wray, a Facing History International Fellow and is one of the coordinators of the Facing the Past program.

All 180 of grade nine pupils at Westerford take the Facing the Past course, a curriculum created through a partnership with Facing History, the Cape Town Holocaust Centre and the Western Cape Department of Education. Over 25 schools in Cape Town province teach the course which fits into the new 9th grade national curriculum addressing human rights and genocide.

Murray's Facing the Past course consists of a 10-week module on Weimar, Germany and the steps leading to the Holocaust. The second term is a 10-week module on the history and legacies of apartheid in South Africa. [ In previous years Murray says her pupils had claimed to have already studied apartheid so much that they couldn't imagine what else there was to learn.]

Facing the Past has helped her overcome that apathy and gotten her pupils excited and interested in the subject. Murray says the themes and approach of the Facing the Past curriculum yield classroom discussion about issues of bystanders, and raise questions for pupils about what they would have done in similar situations.

At the end of the Holocaust module, the class examines the Nuremberg Trials after of WWII, which prosecuted Nazi war crimes. The apartheid module begins with a study of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

"We talk about the differences between the Nuremberg trials and the TRC-- that the TRC's goal was very different. It was truth first, and then amnesty, whereas Nuremberg seemed to be more about retribution."

Dylan Wray, Facing History International Fellow and coordinator of the Facing the Past program. In class they also discuss the legacy of apartheid and how people are dealing with the issues. Do people think the TRC worked? Why do some people feel some things are unresolved? And how do citizens both address injustices of the past and move forward together toward a vision of a fair and more humane society?
Murray says the Facing the Past course has provided pupils with a framework for making connections and having discussion about contemporary issues.

"The Holocaust for me is a springboard for discussions about apartheid. I want the pupils to feel more emotion and more compassion about issues in South Africa. They see the news and they realize there are problems with the new government--and they need to understand where that all came from. I think they have done that."

Murray says her pupils think of South Africa's democracy as being new and special, and that Facing the Past helps them think about their personal responsibilities in this democracy as well as in the world around them. Recently pupils asked about current strikes and protests against housing shortages, and made connections to how these shortages are legacies of the apartheid era. In class, many pupils also raise questions about injustice going on in Zimbabwe.

"The course does make them start to ask questions and gives them tools to ask those questions," says Murray.